Skintick settled down beside Nimander. Their eyes met and Skintick shrugged a silent question, to which Nimander replied with a faint shake of his head.
He’d thought he’d have a few more days. To decide things. The when. The how. The options if they should fail. Tactics. Fall-back plans. So much to think about, but he could speak to no one, could not even hint of what he thought must be done. Clip had stayed too close to them on this descent, as if suspicious, as if deliberately forcing Nimander to say nothing.
There was so much he needed to tell them, and so much that he needed to hear. Discussions, arguments, the weighing of risks and contingencies and coordination. All the things demanded of one who would lead; but his inability to give voice to his intentions, to deliver orders at the end of a long debate, had made him next to useless.
By his presence alone, Clip had stopped Nimander in his tracks.
In this game of move and countermove, Clip had outwitted him, and that galled. The moment the charade was shattered, there would be chaos, and in that scene Clip held the advantage. He had only himself to worry about, alter all,
No, Nimander had no choice but to act alone, to trust in the others to follow.
He knew they were watching him, his every move, studying his face for any telltale expression, for every silent message, and this meant he had to hold himself in check. He had to guard himself against revealing anything, lest one of them misunderstand and so make a fatal mistake, and all of this was wearing him down.
Something lifted noisily from the black water. A span of darkness, vertical, its upper edges dripping, fast dissolving.
‘Follow me,’Clip gasped.’Quickly!’
Nimander rose and tugged Skintick back-‘Everyone, stay behind me’-and, seeing Clip lunge forward and vanish within the Gate, he hurried forward.
But Nenanda reached the portal before him, rushing in even as he drew his sword.
Cursing under his breath, Nimander darted after him.
The Gate was collapsing. Someone shrieked in his wake.
Nimander staggered on slippery, uneven bedrock, half blinded by streaks of lu-minescence that scattered like cut webs. He heard a gasping sound, almost at his feet, and a moment later stumbled against something that groaned.
Nimander reached down, felt a body lying prone. Felt something hot and welling under one palm-the slit of a wound, the leaking of blood. ‘Nenanda?’
Another gasp, and then, ‘I’m sorry, Nimander-I saw-I saw him reaching for his dagger, even as he stepped through-I saw-he knew, he knew you were following, you see-he-’
From somewhere ahead there came a hollow laugh. ‘Do you imagine me an id-iot, Nimander? Too bad it wasn’t you. It should have been you. But then, this way it’s just one more death for you to carry along.’
Nimander stared but could see nothing. ‘You still need us!’
‘Maybe, but it’s too risky to have you so close. When I see a viper, I don’t invite it into my belt-pouch. So, wander lost in here… for ever, Nimander. It won’t feel very different from your life before this, I expect.’
‘The god within you,’ Nimander said, ’is a fool. My Lord will cut it down and you with it, Clip. You don’t know him. You don’t know a damned thing!’
Another laugh, this one much farther away.
Nimander wiped the tears from his cheeks with his free forearm. Beneath his palm, the pulse of blood from the wound had slowed.
Whatever it was, the time had come to drink deep, to use it all. One last time. Nimander straightened.
‘Desra? Skintick? Anyone?’
His words drew echoes, and they were the only replies he received.
Nimander drew his sword, and then set out. In the direction of that mocking laughter.
Ribbons of light swam in the air on all sides.
He encountered no walls, felt no wayward currents of air. The folded bedrock beneath his feet undulated randomly, angling neither upward nor downward for long, uneven enough to make him stumble every now and then, and once to land on his knees with a painful, stinging jolt.
Lost. Not a single sound to betray where Clip might be now.
Yes, this was a clever end for Nimander, one that must have given Clip moments of delicious anticipation. Lost in darkness. Lost to his kin. To his Lord, and to a future that now would never arrive. So perfect, so precise, this punishment-
She had no answer. No, it would never be that simple, would it? Phaed was not an easy memory, not a gentle ghost. Nor his wise conscience. She was none of that.
Just one more kin whose blood stained Nimander’s hands.
He had stopped walking. He stood now, surrounded by oblivion.
‘My hands,’ he whispered. And then slowly lifted them. ‘Stained,’ he said. ‘Yes, stained.’
The blood of kin. The blood of Tiste Andii.
A woman’s hand reached out as if from nowhere, closing round one of his own in a cold grip.
And all at once she was before him, her eyes like twin veils, parting to reveal a depthless, breathtaking love.
He gasped, vertiginous, and almost reeled. ‘Aranatha.’
She said, ‘There is little time, brother. We must hurry.’
Still holding his hand, she set off, pulling him along as she might a child.
But Nimander was of no mind to complain.
